Series Category Archive

The importance of competition

16 Replies Christopher Roberts

This is the forth in a series of articles in which I hope to share with you my knowledge of how and why Technology Bloggers has been so successful, so fast. Learn more about this series by reading our Technology Bloggers success article.

In economic terms, competition breeds quality, choice, low price, innovation and efficiency. In blogging terms its a great way to increase your long-term commenters and therefore your reader base too.

When starting up a new blog encouraging competition is one of the best ways to engage your readers and attract new ones; fast.

If my memory serves me right, from day 1 Technology Bloggers had a ‘Top Commentators’ widget at the bottom of every page on the blog, displaying links to those people who had commented the most. If you have never seen it, scroll down and take a look, or just take a look at this screen shot 🙂

Technology Bloggers top commenters in June 2011Last month Antonia was the top commenter followed by Adrian from Shed Plans, Pete, Anna and finally Diana from Elephant’s Eye. All the people mentioned have dofollow links on every page of Technology Bloggers, to a site of their choosing. But, it’s only the top commenters who get this privilege. This encourages people to visit the blog, to read and comment more to get links back to their site.

You could argue that people will just throw out any random rubbish in their comments and get to the top with ease, but I won’t allow this. Our commenters know (or they should) that I rigorously check through every comment on this blog – with a little help from our spam filters.

So basically what I am getting at is that if you want to encourage more people to comment, use a top commenters widget plugin. I have our widget reset every month as this means that someone can’t get so far ahead that they are almost impossible to catch up!

In the past I have thanked everyone who has contributed to Technology Bloggers success. This includes dofollow links to commenters and authors sites, further incentive to comment.


In the future I have plans to introduce competitions to the blog, where entrants will be rewarded in some way or another for participating. I believe that this will also encourage more people to visit the blog, as competition gets people excited, it gets people interested, and it makes people want to stick around.

Respect: give it to get it

10 Replies Christopher Roberts

This is the third in a series of articles in which I hope to share with you my knowledge of how and why Technology Bloggers has been so successful, so fast. Learn more about this series by reading our Technology Bloggers success article.

I believe that respect is one of the most crucial things in blogging. If you are good to your readers, your readers will be good to you.


Respect - Give It To Get It

To build up a great community (like the one on this blog) you have to be a friendly author. Most of our authors, myself included, don’t just leave their article once it is written, they check back every few days and reply to comments.

But it’s not just about being a good commenter.

Being a dofollow blog is one of the main reasons for the success of this blog. People come here because they know they will be treated well.

You have heard it all before but I shall sumarise it again: if you read you benefit from out great content and the ability to comment and gain dofollow keyword rich links to your latest content; if you write you also have the ability to get dofollow keyword rich links links to your content in your article, and (if you are of author status or higher) you can get a link to your chosen site on the sidebar.

I believe that if you offer people fantastic content from a variety of different authors, as well as dofollow keyword rich links in comments, matched with great incentives to write, you have a recipe for success!

Not 100% convinced about dofollow? Well it is thought that it might lower your PageRank, especially on individual articles, and there are some rumors that it can harm you in the SERP’s, but from my personal experience, I believe that the benefits outweigh the costs.

Need some proof? Here are just a few great blogs which are very successful and are dofollow:

Check their traffic ranking. Notice anything? Dofollow blogs with great content, also the authors usually try to respond to any comments in need of a reply.

Are you a dofollow blog? If not why not? From my experience with Technology Bloggers and my own philosophy blog, dofollow is one way of succeeding in blogging.

Why does dofollow work?

I believe it all comes back down to respect, you are respecting your writers and readers, so in tern they respect you.

If you run a nofollow blog, try switching. Do it today and never look back 🙂

Back next Monday with the next in the series!

How promoting your blog’s launch is key to an early success

4 Replies Christopher Roberts

This is the second in a series of articles in which I hope to share with you my knowledge of how and why Technology Bloggers has been so successful, so fast. Learn more about this series by reading our Technology Bloggers success article.

They say that if your parents give you a good start in life, you will go far. It is of course possible to go far by yourself, but a good start significantly improves your chances of greatness.

I believe that you can apply this ethos to blogging too. A good start to a blog, usually (with exceptions of bloggers who lie/cheat etc.) helps towards guaranteeing the success of a blog.

For a blog to be given a good start, one key thing is needed: promotion. Promoting the blog can be done in various ways, as I am about to explain.

Social Media

10 years ago, blogging was in it’s infancy, and you could argue that social media didn’t even exist. Now social media is one of the most powerful tools that a blogger can have in his inventory.

I believe that social media played a part, (not a massive one, but a valid one all the same) in the initial success of Technology Bloggers, via helping promote the blog.

Technology Bloggers has a Facebook page. Now this would be a missed opportunity if I didn’t use this article to get a tiny plug for the page in, so here it is. Please like Technology Bloggers for updates straight to your feed. How? Click ‘like’ on our sidebar button, it really is that simple!

Anyway, we also have a Twitter and YouTube account. These all established the blog across the social web before the blog had even started posting.

Twitter's LogoAt the time the number of people following our social media pages was relatively small, but, if just a few people are subscribed and visit the site, see the great content, cool design, dofollow links etc. and tell a few friends or even better, blog about the blog, then that’s a lot of traffic gained from a relatively small number of subscribers.

Social media only played a small part in our promotion though. This technology blog had a lot more than that to get it off the ground!

about.me and Technorati

When the blog launched, I registered Technology Bloggers with Technorati and about.me. These further advanced Technology Blogger out into the world wide web.

Again only a few people are likely to have initially found Technology Bloggers via our about.me profile, or our via searching for technology articles in Technorati and having our blog come up. Hoverer, again these few people all add up.

Friends Sites

The majority of our Technology Bloggers traffic initially came from referrals from sites that I regularly visited and commented on or guest blogged for. The importance of comments is very great.

Comments can help to generate you a lot of positive traffic, and valuable links. The people who’s blogs you comment on are likely to visit your blog, so too are the commenters of that blog, especially if it is one with a ‘tight community’.

Guest blogging is also a great way to get traffic quick. On behalf of Technology Bloggers I have guest blogged in an attempt to raise the blogs profile. Finding high traffic, good quality sites with large reader numbers, which allow guest posts is a gift.


Guest blogging is very very useful as it helps to get you known around the blogosphere to both bloggers and comments. It also helps you to get quality, keyword rich backlinks to your site. Guest blogging can also give you a new perspective on blogging and a sense of direction.

My Other Sites

If you are thinking of setting up a blog, website or forum you would be daft not to use your existing sites to help promote the newbie. I did exactly this for Technology Bloggers at it’s launch. I wrote about it and linked to it from my website (Christopher Roberts Website) my social blog, my philosophy blog and my (now archive) technology blog.

To sum up…

When starting a blog it is really important that you promote it in as many ways as possible. You could look at financial advertising, or simply just use social media, online profiles and links from your own site. Build yourself a reputation up and promote your blog in as many ways as you can think, and you are sure to have a smooth and fairly rapid launch.

If you are looking to start a blog, good luck. Also stay tuned to this series, as you may find some more useful info in next weeks article. Finally if you ever need any help, contact us via our contact page.